Unanswered Questions

I've been primarily focused on logical arguments in these posts about Watchtower. Lets face it, there's a lot to pick apart when it comes to their reasoning. I could spend a lifetime parsing their incomprehensible reasoning, prophecies, and policies. A career though it could be, there are enough academic minds mulling over the conundrum of a corporate publishing company posing as a charity that my contributions will be barely missed.

There are times when it's simply a personal journey to point out the absurdity of Watchtower. As often, it's more about what one can't say about their milieu that what they can that exposes the deep scars they hide.

While I didn't realize it at the time, I was first faced with this inward examination when I was about ten-years-old. I had taken my first trip to Colorado with the family for an annual ski trip. Before then, I'd been too young to go. I was, for my lack of skiing experience, left to the devices of the Winter Park Ski School. By sheer luck, I was put into a class of nearly all Spanish speaking students who were on some kind of retreat.

The inherent isolation of being the only Witness in my school and part of a non-affectionate and dysfunctional family was horribly punctuated by my new isolation vis a vis my native tongue. Be that as it may, I was paired with a boy about my age, Emilio. Despite this language barrier, he and I looked after each other and got on quite well.

I progressed quickly in the ski school. By the third day of the trip, I found myself alone yet again as the Colombian Delegation had found other things to do. I received de facto private lessons on Wednesday of the week with a pretty cool instructor. His name I can't seem to remember.

By mid morning, I was having one of the best days of my young life. I was getting to ski with a cool older guy without the leering oversight of my parents. We hopped onto a lift and started our way back up the hill. In a conversational way, my instructor asked me who my favorite band was.

It was a question I couldn't answer...

Even at the age of ten, I had received so little exposure to popular music that I couldn't even identify what I liked, or who sang it. Most music of the era was simply of the Devil. What radio we did listen to was KMOX talk radio. It was the only thing ever on in the family vehicle, much to my eternal dismay.

But here I was. Suspended twenty feet above a snowy hill in Colorado with no way to answer such a simple question. I was hard pressed to even name a band that was relevant or current. Sensing my struggle, the instructor retained his cool and began naming off some of his favorites. I heard a name I recognized and jumped on it.

As I've grown older, I've realized that I there is far too much in life that I'm experiencing for the first time. The world has had a particular blandness that can only be appreciated after one has had a taste of its wondrous variety. Even now, fifteen years on since my exit from Watchtower, I'm still amazed by new things; things that were a very normal part of life for most as they came of age.

These days, the number of questions I can't answer has shrunk to a much smaller list. I will, however, admit that my twenties were bland by comparison to those of my generation. By my age, people generally have ridiculous stories of foolishness, risks taken, and youthful conquests. I have none of those.

"What's the craziest thing you've ever done," one may ask me? For that, I have no answer. Nothing in my life would seem all that crazy. At least it doesn't seem that way to me.

In my humble opinion, a life as a Witness could be likened to eating food only naturally. The steady diet of the mundane could make the smallest dash of salt shockingly offensive. Enough so that it could make one recoil in horror and discomfort. That really doesn't seem to be so far off from what Watchtower tells us from the platform. We've been warned about the corrupting influence of the world. Fleshly pleasures. Ungodly pursuits. Leaven that ferments the loaf.

The book of Genesis claims that the Devil seduced Eve by saying that she would become like God, knowing good and evil. This is often expressed as the first 'lie', when it was in fact just a clever turn of phrase. He never promised that Eve would have dominion over good and evil, the authority to declare which was which, and certainly never claimed she'd become a deity. He simply said she would know good and evil.

Even from a young age, I never regarded this as a lie. I always took it to mean that by eating of the forbidden fruit, she would become intimately familiar with sin. Thus she knew evil because she had experienced evil.

Similarly, I could not comment on anything I didn't know.

If I were to stand before God at judgement and he asked if I'd done my best, I would have to claim ignorance. How can I know my best if I do not also know my worst? This too is a question I cannot answer.

The unremarkable flavor of life I experienced as a Witness didn't particularly leave me longing for more. It was my 'normal'. There was no way to differentiate between what I did not know and what I wanted to know because, as Ockham's Razor dictates, that which we cannot perceive may not be considered an influence. As with Eve, it was impossible for her to perceive sin in any other way than to become familiar through commission. And with me, I could not long for that which I did not know existed.

It's my personal hope that I reach the end of my days, and if asked what I will miss most about my life, I can honestly say 'everything' instead of  'I don't know'.